Thanks for your comments Chris,
"Neverthelesss, there have been many kite-marking schemes proposed, but these have not fared well. For example, the Health On the Net Foundation (HON), a Swiss not-for-profit organization based in Geneva which promoted a code of conduct for websites providing health information and offered certificates to those in compliance. According to Wikipedia, "In September 2022, Health On the Net website pages included the advisory text "HON is no longer updated and will be permanently discontinued on December 15, 2022."
It would be interesting to understand why Health On the Net Foundation closed. Three HIFA steering group members commented at the time, all former WHO staff:
Meena Cherian reported that "I searched HON and am surprised to find the following note on their website (not sure if its true maybe someone can check too): HON is no longer updated and will be permanently discontinued on December 15, 2022. Despite all our efforts, it is no longer possible to maintain it. We thank you for your understanding."
Najeeb Al-Shorbaji wrote: "It’s a dark day for those who look for independent criteria for judging the quality of health and medical information on the Internet... This organization has been doing excellent job in multiple languages with minimum number of people. Celia Boyer [Director, HoN] told me over a year ago that there might be complete closure of the Health on Net due to lack of funding."
Chris Zielinski wrote: "I completely agree with Najeeb regarding the sad demise of HON - it is amazing that, in this age of mis- and disinformation, we still don't have a kite-marking scheme to guarantee the accuracy of health information."
Apparently the primary cause was lack of funding and it would be helpful to know why. Was this due to a failure in communicating the value of the initiative to funders, was it related to perceived or actual limitations in the approach, or other factors?
Meanwhile, a similar scheme - the PIF TICK - is doing very well, based in the UK and run by the Patient Information Forum.
As we have discussed in the past few days, developments in artificial intelligence may arguably provide an additional means of checking reliability. Indeed the two approaches may be complementary: kitemarks such as PIF TICK would focus on content creation policies, whereas AI could potentially assess the reliability of actual content. Over time, the latter *might* gradually supersede the former.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org